Community-based Participatory Research: Challenging “Lone Ethnographer” Anthropology in the Community and the Classroom

Abstract

Despite a rich history of collaborative and engaged scholarship and the recent “participatory turn” in anthropology few anthropology departments train students in the philosophy or methods of collaboration. Graduate training is typically characterized by conventional classroom-based lectures and individualized projects, while participatory research is thought of as something scholars can do later in their careers. The 2013 Health Equity Alliance of Tallahassee (HEAT) Ethnographic Field School disrupted this paradigm. The Field School used a community-based participatory research (CBPR) framework to train graduate students and community stakeholders in applied research methods through participation in an established community/university research partnership, examining race, racism, and health outcomes. The Field School was comprised of a racially, economically, and educationally diverse, intergenerational, multicultural, and multiethnic group of participants. Reflecting on this experience, we challenge the myth of the “lone ethnographer” and argue for a reorientation in anthropological methods training towards transdisciplinary, participatory, and collaborative ethnographic methods.

Pedagogy in Action

“…And yet, in spite of this trend and the turn away from anthropology as a solo endeavour, one questions how anthropology departments are adapting their methods classes. The fact that most classes typically remain classroom-based and designed around individualised projects (Jessee et al 2015) has much to say about the continuing failure of collaborative approaches to displace the central tropes of rapport, immersion and ethnographic authority as professional ideals (Marcus 1997). Perhaps because of the assumption that participatory research is something that 'scholars can do later in their careers' (Jessee et al 2015: 9), one fi nds its implications for anthropological training rarely extending beyond the application of conventional methods to a new set of circumstances.…”

A Conceptualization of the Urban Food-Energy-Water Nexus Sustainability Paradigm: Modeling From Theory to Practice

“…One of the most encouraging trends is that the evolution and transition of the integrated urban agriculture food and nutrition system is rooted in community based action organizations and initiatives responsive to various socioeconomic drivers and impacts: i.e., urbanization; under-/over-nutrition; environmental justice; climate justice; health disparities; income and employment; and food-access especially amongst minority and low-wealth populations (Gragg et al, 1997(Gragg et al, , 2002Sobal et al, 1998;Gee and Payne-Sturges, 2004;Hicken et al, 2011;White and Hamm, 2014;Posts and Campbell, 2017). Furthermore, these urban agricultural food system drivers are fostering collaborative, functional and transformative responses in the contexts of institutional interplay; co-management, boundary or bridging organizations and social entrepreneurship amongst stakeholders at various socioeconomic and intra-urban and peri-urban scales and levels (Lee et al, 2006;Sekovski et al, 2012;Gragg et al, 2015;Jessee et al, 2015). Results include but are not limited to: food-networks (Arndt et al, 2009;Allen, 2010;Koopmans et al, 2017); community-food gardens and farms (Lovell, 2010;Hirsch et al, 2016); urban agriculture and food systems planning; local, regional, national and global food systems; food-policy councils; treating the city as if it were an ecosystem in the urban planning and design process; "bioreactorbased, distributed manufacturing systems to close the urban, water, food, waste and energy loops, that fit seamlessly into the urban environment" (Coelho and Ruth, 2006;Ericksen, 2008;Padoch et al, 2008;Sterman, 2011;Armendáriz et al, 2016); rooftop gardening; indoor vertical commercial farming; food systems architecture; design; and tech innovation with many opportunities for enhancing food and nutritional securityand increasing productivity and down-stream, value-chain entrepreneurial opportunities-particularly with more efficient use of technology the interconnectivity of the cloud, ubiquitous cell phone coverage, uberization of goods and service-from mechanization, to urban cloud-kitchens to customer delivery (Lovell, 2010;Knizhnik, 2012;Fung and Jim, 2017) for the evolving integrated urban regional food and ...…”

“…methods and practices, research and community engagement (Gragg et al, 2015;Jessee et al, 2015). Figure 5A examines three causal chain and loop scenarios to further explain the complexity and differences of the driver response variables and their cross-scale interactions in the unconnected, connected, and nested sustainability scenarios.…”

What anthropologists can learn from psychologists, and the other way around

“…Anthropologists have grown acutely conscious of the power asymmetry between the one who conducts the research and the one about whom the research is conducted. They have sought out ways to collaborate with their research participants, from co‐authoring to creating a form of fieldwork now known as ‘participatory’, in which researchers work as partners with local participants on problems of direct interest to them (Jessee, Collum & Gragg 2015; Ross, Sherman, Snodgrass, Delcore & Sherman 2011). Anthropologists have grown more sophisticated about the politics of representation and more sensitive to the risks of latent racism and sexism.…”